Street Fight Daily: Village Soup Folds, Armstrong Defends Patch

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.

Village Soup’s Hot Pursuit of a Hyperlocal Model Goes Cold (Nieman Lab)
It wasn’t that long ago that Maine’s Village Soup was being lauded as a model for what a print/online hybrid strategy for local journalism could look like. That optimism took a big hit late Friday with the abrupt closure of Village NetMedia’s newspapers and their related websites.

The Geo-Social Revolution That Wasn’t (GigaOm)
Ryan Lawler: Just because users don’t quite “get it” right now doesn’t mean the SoLoMo segment is doomed. Ambient awareness seems to have legs, and there are good reasons to believe there will be consumer demand for this type of app in the future. And let’s remember that Foursquare was also considered creepy once upon a time

AOL’s Armstrong: Why Patch Is a Good Investment (Romenesko)
AOL chief executive Tim Armstrong told investors yesterday that he has “a lot of tens of millions of dollars” invested in Patch “and I would not put investors in any situation that I wouldn’t want to be in myself.” The average Patch roughly costs $150,000 to run, he says, while the average marketplace that it’s in has about $900 million of commerce.

Foursquare’s Facebook Integration Gets Prettier, Adds Activity Summaries (TechCrunch)
Foursquare made a slight, but welcome, change to its Facebook integration today that will now offer “prettier” Facebook Wall posts regarding your activities. Instead of posts that just show a standardized icon as before, the posts will include a full map, or your photos, if you’ve taken any, to accompany the check-in. Foursquare will also turn a long stream of check-ins into one, aggregated summary story.

Constant Contact Founder: ‘Stop the Fragmentation, SMBs Can’t Cope’ (Local Onliner)
The arrival of Groupon and Living Social four years ago appeared to be a no money down, fail-safe way to get ahold of small business accounts. But the followup hasn’t been easy, and the race to win SMB accounts is still anybody’s to win. In fact, there is no single “disruptive” door into the marketplace , says Constant Contact Founder Randy Parker, who has been watching the transition of SMB marketing since 1995.